FEMALE VIOLENCE is Reputation Destruction. Accusers Use ‘Street Justice’ to Harass TIX Accused Males Before Verdict. Their Lawyers Are Fighting Back.
When colleges adjudicate sexual misconduct claims, some accusing students can’t wait for a verdict to be handed down. They take extrajudicial action by publicly labeling accused students as rapists, potentially ruining those students’ reputations even if they are eventually acquitted. Lawyers for accused students have a response to this “troubling trend” of “street justice” in Title IX cases: turn the campus disciplinary code back on accusers.
Attorney Kimberly Lau advises her clients how to use bullying and harassment policies against accusers who subvert the confidentiality of ongoing proceedings. Lau, who has critiqued the Trump administration’s proposed Title IX regulations as too flexible for colleges, explained how this tactic can get around the murky legal intersection of due process, freedom of speech and defamation.
The “ubiquitous” nature of the internet will worsen the trend of street justice until colleges and the Department of Education finalize procedures to manage this delicate balance, Lau said. That’s why she recommends that schools make evaluations of street justice on a “case-by-case” basis and permit students to claim harassment or bullying in response to defamation. While the #MeToo movement’s influence makes it hard to convince schools to protect accused students’ rights, Lau emphasized that confidentiality protects both accusers and accused. Either party in a proceeding could use the mechanism of student code-of-conduct complaints to protect their reputation against unsubstantiated public statements. Since both pay tuition, they should each receive “equal access to education without harassment.”
Attorney Andrew Miltenberg detailed the horrors his clients faced during and after their proceedings saying schools don’t take this issue seriously and sometimes “willfully ignore” it. “Schools essentially come back with some form of we can’t stop people from talking” before proceedings have concluded. “The real tragedy is that often, the rumors act as a constructive expulsion since the young man’s reputation and credibility is destroyed regardless of the win.”
Lau’s recommendation to use internal harassment and bullying complaints against accusers, putting them on the defensive for spreading unverified claims, came out of her own clients’ experiences with street justice. One client faced “damage to his reputation on campus, the loss of friends, and concern over his future employment options” following public social media posts that identified him as guilty, contrary to the school’s finding of “not responsible.”
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